Uncanny realism invests the bronze statue of three
servicemenplaced near the wall as if they are scanningfor
theirown names there. The work by Washington,D. C.,
sculptor FrederickHart depicts the ethnicity, comradeship,
apparel,andyouth of Vietnam fighting men.
their objections. The sculptor eventually
selected, 38-year-old Washingtonian Fred
erick Hart, had been the highest placing
sculptor in the original competition.
Hart's selection symbolized how the
country was pulling together. The wall
and statue would come from a woman too
young to have experienced the war and
a man who never served in the military
and said he had been gassed in an antiwar
demonstration.
At 11 a.m. on Monday, March 15, Secre
tary Watt authorized a permit. As concrete
pilings were driven 35 feet into the ground,
workmen in Barre, Vermont, used mas
sive, high-speed, diamond-tipped saws to
cut 3 ,000 cubic feet of granite into slices that
were polished first by a series of bricks and
then by a felt buffer covered with tin oxide,
which is finer than talc.
Guided by computer-generated draw
ings, workers then fabricated the stone,
cutting it into about 150 panels, each of
them three inches thick, 40 inches wide,
S and varying in height from ten feet nine
inches to 18 inches.
Shipped on specially air-cushioned
trucks to Memphis, Tennessee, the stone
was cleaned, painted with chemicals, and
JAMESP. BLAIR
allowed to dry overnight. It was covered
with a photo negative that was an exact
stencil of the names in the order in which they would appear on the wall; then it was
exposed to light, left for a short time, washed, and gritblasted. Experiment revealed
that cutting letters into the stone one-fiftieth of an inch deep made them cast too
heavy a shadow. Even a small error could spoil the memorial.
Architect Kent Cooper, hired by the VVMF to develop Maya Lin's design, made
the final decisions: To maximize legibility, use very fine grit, do the blasting straight
in front, and stand about 18 inches away so the letters will have maximum depth
with uniform shadow. The letters would be .53 inches high and .015 inches deep.
Bob Doubek supervised compilation of the names. Many cases were heartbreak
ing. Veterans had been slowly dying from war-related causes for years. Some of
them were in comas. Some had died in training or while on their way to Indochina.
At least one former POW had committed suicide shortly after he returned home.
Who should go on the wall? The VVMF could only rely on the Department of De
fense: If the Pentagon, acting in accordance with presidential directives specifying
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and coastal areas as combat zones, listed an individual
National Geographic, May 1985
570